It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a new roundup of crime drama news:
THE BIG SCREEN
Sony Pictures has signed a six-figure preemptive deal for I Heart Murder, a horror/crime spec script by Tom O’Donnell. The plot is being kept under wraps, but it’s said to be a female-driven thriller, and several actresses are already circling the lead roles.
Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star in Fox Searchlight's Nightmare Alley, a film based on the William Lindsay Gresham 1946 novel, with Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) serving as director and co-writer of the script (with Kim Morgan). Set in the dark, shadowy world of a second rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters, and Machiavellian femmes fatales, the story centers on a corrupt con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist to trick people into giving them money.
John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Boyd Holbrook (Logan) and Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread) are set to lead the cast in Born To Be Murdered. The project is set in Athens and the Epirus region of Greece, where a vacationing couple, played by Washington and Vikander, fall prey to a violent conspiracy with tragic consequences. Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (Antonia) will direct from a screenplay by Kevin Rice.
The producers of the still-untitled Bond 25 revealed key cast and production details while Tweeting from Jamaica (the iconic location for previous Bond films Dr. No and Live And Let Die). Daniel Craig returns as Bond, and other cast members set to return include Ralph Fiennes as MI6 head M; Ben Whishaw as Q; Naomie Harris as Bond’s assistant Moneypenny; Lea Seydoeux as his former flame Dr. Madeleine Swann; Rory Kinnear as MI6 chief of staff Bill Tanner; and Jeffrey Wright as Bond’s CIA counterpart Felix Leiter. The plot begins with Bond not on active service but his peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter asks for help to rescue a kidnapped scientist - a mission that leads Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain (Rami Malek) armed with dangerous new technology.
Brian Geraghty (The Alienist), Bethany Joy Lenz (One Tree Hill), and Sharon Leal (Instinct) are set to star in Blindfire, a crime drama written and directed by Mike Nell. The film centers around a police officer (Geraghty) who, while responding to a violent hostage call, kills the African American suspect only to later learn of his innocence. Sensing this was a set-up, he must track down the person responsible while examining his own accountability and the ingrained racism which brought him to this point. Leal will play his partner, while Lenz has been cast as his wife.
Luke Evans (The Girl on the Train), Mia Kirshner (The Black Dahlia), Michael Aronov (The Americans) and Martin Donovan (Big Little Lies) are the latest to join Nicholas Jarecki‘s dramatic thriller, Dreamland. They’ll co-star opposite Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez, and Lily-Rose Depp in the opioid crisis pic, which is shooting in Montreal. The film follows three colliding stories: A drug trafficker (Hammer) arranges a multi-cartel Fentanyl smuggling operation between Canada and the U.S.; an architect (Lilly) recovering from an OxyContin addiction tracks down the truth behind her son’s involvement with narcotics; and a university professor (Oldman) battles unexpected revelations about his employer, a drug company with deep government influence bringing a new “non-addictive” painkiller to market.
Katherine Heigl, Harry Connick Jr., and Madison Iseman are set to star in I Saw a Man with Yellow Eyes, a psychological thriller written and directed by Castille Landon. The project follows a teenage girl living with schizophrenia who struggles with vivid and terrifying hallucinations as she begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.
9-1-1's Angela Bassett has signed on to co-star in the action thriller, Gunpowder Milkshake. Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado are directing the film from a script they wrote with Ehud Lavski, which is said to be "a high-concept female-centric assassin thriller that spans multiple generations." Angela will play Anna May, one of the unassuming leaders of a massive armory.
Using advanced new de-aging technology, Will Smith goes face to face with his greatest enemy in the first trailer for Gemini Man — himself. In Ang Lee’s futuristic thriller, Smith plays a world-class assassin hunting a man who knows his every move, only to discover that the target is actually his younger clone (accomplished by using footage from Smith's 1990s Fresh Prince era).
A trailer was also unveiled for the Gothic mystery-thriller, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, based on a story by Shirley Jackson. The plot focuses on two sisters who live secluded in a large manor and care for their deranged Uncle Julian, after the rest of their family died five years before under suspicious circumstances. When a cousin arrives for a visit, family secrets and scandals unravel.
Lionsgate released a trailer and images for the upcoming mystery thriller, The Poison Rose, based on Richard Salvatore’s novel of the same name. John Travolta plays Carson Philips, a hard-drinking L.A. private eye who takes a case in his old hometown of Galveston, Texas. While searching for a missing woman, Philips must confront a crime boss (Morgan Freeman), a shady doctor (Brendan Fraser), a sexy club singer (Kat Graham), his former lover (Famke Janssen) — and his own dark, disturbing past.
STXfilms’ 21 Bridges also dropped its first trailer, focusing on an embattled NYPD detective (Chadwick Boseman) who is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy. As the night unfolds, lines become blurred between who he is pursuing and who is in pursuit of him.
TELEVISION/STREAMING SERVICES
Code Black's Meg Steedle is set to recur on the upcoming third season of AT&T Audience Network’s critically praised drama series Mr. Mercedes, based on the Stephen King novels. Season 2 took place a year after Brady Hartsfield’s (Harry Treadaway) thwarted attempt to perpetrate a second mass murder in the community of Bridgton, Ohio. Since the incident, Hartsfield had been hospitalized in a vegetative state. Retired Detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) did his best to move on from his Brady obsession, teaming up with Holly Gibney (Justine Lupe) to open Finders Keepers, a private investigative agency.
One day after announcing it had found its Alex Rider star (Mrs. Wilson's Otto Farrant), Sony Pictures Television has rounded out the full cast for its adaptation of the teen superspy drama. Game of Thrones star Brenock O’Connor will play Alex Rider’s jovial best friend Tom; Stephen Dillane will play Alan Blunt, who commands The Department, a secret underworld offshoot of MI6; Andrew Buchan will take on the role of Alex's uncle and reluctant guardian, Ian Rider; and Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo will play Alex's housekeeper Jack Starbright. Unbeknownst to Alex, Ian has been relentlessly training him since childhood and preparing him for the threatening world of espionage, and Blunt entraps the unsuspecting Alex to work as an undercover agent at the Point Blanc academy.
In addition to NCIS, CBS has also renewed its two spin-offs, NCIS: Los Angeles, returning for its 11th season, and NCIS: New Orleans, which will return for a sixth. NCIS: Los Angeles centers on the counter-terrorist division of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and stars Chris O'Donnell, Daniela Ruah, LL Cool J, Barrett Foa, Linda Hunt, Eric Christian Olsen, Renee Felice Smith, and Nia Long. NCIS: New Orleans, meanwhile, centers on a satellite team in the bayou and stars Scott Bakula, Lucas Black, CCH Pounder, Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, Rob Kerkovich, Shalita Grant, and Vanessa Ferlito.
Netflix has set May 16 for the premiere of Good Sam, a feature based on the mystery book series of the same name by Dete Meserve. The film follows intrepid TV news reporter Kate Bradley (Tiya Sircar) who is assigned to uncover the identity of a mysterious Good Samaritan—Good Sam—who has been anonymously leaving $100,000 cash gifts on the doorsteps of seemingly random New Yorkers. As interest in the extraordinary gifts sweeps across the country, Kate seeks to unravel the identity of Good Sam and the powerful and unexpected reasons behind the extraordinary gifts.
NBC has put the on-the-bubble show, Blindspot, on a scheduling hiatus during the important May Sweeps ratings period through May 24, which doesn't bode well for a Season 5 renewal. The Blacklist will take over its Friday at 8/7c time slot through its Season 6 finale on May 17. Then Blindspot will return for three more episodes, one on May 24 and two on May 31, which will serve as the Season 4 and possible series finale. Blindspot's ratings are down 20% year-over-year.
Netflix has released the first trailer for its new original series What/If featuring Academy Award winning Renée Zellweger introducing her clients to an "Indecent Proposal-meets-Westworld scenario" where anything or anyone can be yours for the taking. The 10-episode first season will be devoted to the story of a pair of San Francisco newlyweds who become wrapped up in Zellweger's character's dubious scheme, which will earn them some much-needed cash but cause the couple to do "unacceptable things."
Netflix’s new action-comedy, Murder Mystery, also released a trailer with Adam Sandler playing a New York detective who, after 15 years of marriage, finally takes his wife (Jennifer Aniston) on a long-promised European trip. When Aniston's character meets a charming and wealthy British man (Luke Evans), he invites them to an intimate family gathering on an elderly billionaire's yacht, only to be present when the man is murdered and thus become the prime suspects in a modern-day whodunit.
PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO
Read or Dead hosts Katie McClean Horner and Rincey Abraham beat the drum to recruit people to the Sujata Massey fan club on the latest podcast episode (Massey just won the Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Edgars ceremony for The Widows of Malabar Hill). They also picked up books from some new-to-them authors.
Speaking of Mysteries welcomed Mariah Fredericks to discuss her Death of a New American, featuring ladies' maid Jane Prescott, and also sat down with Randy Overbeck to chat about his new title, Blood on the Chesapeake.
Wrong Place, Write Crime host Frank Zafiro spoke with Michael Pool about his new book, Rose City, in which protagonist Cole Quick has to solve an old friend’s murder while resisting powerful forces conspiring to pillage his inheritance.
The latest Mysteryrat’s Maze podcast featured the first chapter of the mystery novel, The Inn At Holiday Bay: Boxes in the Basement, by Kathi Daley, as read by actor Julia Reimer.
